Wednesday, May 9, 2018

A few years ago, I did a series of blogs on the six shortlisted
collections for the 2012 Frank O’Connor. Kevin
Barry’s collection Dark Lies the Island, was my favorite of the six
shortlisted books, but I quickly admitted that it was my favorite for personal
reasons, not necessarily for critical reasons.

I enjoyed Barry’s Dark Lies the Island
because:

*I have lived in Ireland and love the people.

*My wife, whom I love best of all people, is
Irish.

*I love Jameson, Bushmills, and Guinness.

I also liked Barry’s story “A Cruelty.” I
found the story simple and irresistible.
You know from the very first sentence that the story is about the power of
obsession: “He climbs the twenty-three steps of the metal traverse bridge at
9:25 a.m., and not an instant before.”After a page and a half of obsessive observation, we get the background
of the main character Donie, who was first allowed to make the short train
journey from Boyle to Sligo on his sixteenth birthday.He has now made the run every working day for
twenty years, and it is his belief that if he is not on the 9:33 train, the
9:33 will not run.The ritual is his way
of controlling his limited life; he experiences a 100 percent day when
everything falls into place just as it should.

But of course, as is the nature of a short
story, this is an account of a day when things do not go on in the smooth
ritualistic way that Donie thinks they should, for as he eats his usual
sandwiches on his usual bench, a man appears who manifests an inexplicable
cruelty—calling him a “poor dumb cunt” and saying that it looks as though the best part of Donie “dribbled down the
father’s leg.”The man reminds Donie of
a picture of a hyena he once saw in a coloring book, and the image haunts him
even after he escapes.The day is
spoiled, of course, and it is not clear if Donie will ever feel at home in the
world again.It is his first encounter
with motiveless malignancy—there is no accounting for it. All he can do is go
home and retreat into the arms of his mother.

I remember once when I was in a department
store with my daughter, a sweet trusting child of two or three. A woman stood close by looking
at clothes with her son, also about the age of two or three.When my daughter reached out to greet him, he
suddenly pushed her away with a frown. I have never forgotten her face as she looked up at me for an
explanation. I had none.

Heather Monley, “Paddle to Canada”

This is another simple story about a family who, while on holiday, get
caught in a thunderstorm while paddle boating on a lake.Heather Monley says the story originated from
a memory of when she was four or five and her family were similarly caught in a
storm. However, the event is not the story, but rather it serves as the center
of a story about telling stories, for the fictional family members never forget
the event and often laugh about it. When the father goes back to the boat
rental to get his driver’s license, the owner challenges his failure to make a
deposit. The father laughs at the idea that the rental required a deposit: “What
do they think we’re going to do?Paddle
to Canada?”

But later the story becomes a point of contention after the parents get
a divorce.The mother uses it as an
example of the father’s carelessness and selfish stinginess.The father uses it as an example of the
mother’s ineptitude, hysterically shrieking and being no help on the
paddleboat.The children’s memories of
the event become “muddled with what they had been told , and what they wanted
to believe.”

In her comments on the story, Heather Monley says it is about the
nature of stories, a subject she finds herself returning to often.“I like stories that question themselves,”
she says, stories that “point out the tenuous connection between narrative and
truth.”For the children the event becomes
an occasion for trying to understand-- “as if thinking hard enough or in the
right combination would lead somewhere, would form a pathway to a world that
had been lost in the confusion of their lives.” This is a thematically tight
story. The peril in the boat, the fear, and then the joy of surviving, and telling
the story over and over creates a kind of bond between the family--that is,
until the divorce, and the two children get different sides of the parents
blaming each other. A broken family is a complex experience for children.
Heather Monley has found a story way of dealing with that complexity.

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Ten Anniversary of My Blog

Friday, Nov. 16, is the tenth anniversary of my blog. I have been taking some time off because I have been working on a new book on the short story. I have submitted a proposal to a publisher and am waiting for a reply. I will let you know when I hear from them. Thank you for continuing to read essays in my archives.

Now Available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle

Click cover to go to Amazon and read the Introduction and first chapter.

Reality of Artifice

New Short Story Theories

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About Me

Born and raised in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. Received B.A. from Morehead State University in 1963; M.A. from Ohio University in 1964; Ph.D. from Ohio University in 1966. Taught at California State University, Long Beach from 1967 to 2007. Retired and currently writing and blogging.

Dubliners Centenial

One hundred years ago, the great collection of stories Dubliners by James Joyce appeared. If you are interested in my comments on that collection, see my posts in April 2012 when the book was featured in Dublin's "One City, One Book."